WHEN THE PARADE PASSES BY

I understood you

From the moment you said goodbye

I laughed so loud and long

That I started to cry 

What begins with thunder

Ends with a soft lonely sigh

I guess it all makes sense 

When the parade passes by 

I called all my friends 

To tell ‘em I needed no one

I howled all night at the moon

Till I got burnt by the sun

Told myself I felt good 

In truth I wanted to die 

Some of us act like fools 

When the parade passes by 

I saw a man hit someone in the face 

Just to take away their dignity

I saw things standin’ in the wrong place

That no one had a right to see 

So I clenched my jaw

And disappeared without a trace

My race had been run

I finished last in this human race 

You understood me

Got it right more than someone else

So I put you in my will

And I left you my house

Although I didn’t own itj

It’s the thought that counts 

I hear that it made you cr

But at least you’ll think of me

When the parade passes by 

(C) Frank Howson 2021

INFECTED

I’ve been poisoned 

By too many poisonous demons

Posing as friends

Posing as human beings

Lying about their past and their future intentions 

Stealing everything of mine

They thought I cared about

Money, trophies, and work

That I had paid for in blood, sweat and marriages 

But they got me wrong 

I couldn’t be found there 

For I was already somewhere else

Someone else 

Someone stronger

Someone colder

Their resentment actually empowering me

For all they did was prove 

That material things are just that

They don’t get you to sleep at night

They don’t buy you a genuine embrace

They don’t ease your mind or your load 

They don’t short cut you into heaven 

They don’t justify your rusted conscience 

For to lose it all

Is to finally be free

To shed every skin of protection

Until you are as liberated

As a new born naked baby

Free falling to a soft landing

And accepting it all 

Pining for nothing except this moment 

Where no memory exists

And there are no debts to be repaid

No one to breathe life into 

And no eyes that can make me flinch

For when I look at you now

I see into your very soul

(C) Frank Howson 2020

I DREAMED

I dreamed I was a general

With an army ready to serve

I dreamed I was a hero 

Till I’d wake and lose my nerve 

I dreamed I was a good man

And always knew what to do

But one thing I never dreamed 

Was that I’d fall in love with you

I dreamed I was a father

That would never desert my post

I dreamed I was a lover

That girls would love the most 

I dreamed I was a dreamer

And that all my dreams came true

But one thing I never dreamed

Was that I’d fall in love with you

I had the world in the palm of my hand

But I lost my concentration

I could’ve been the life of the party

But I lost my invitation…

I dreamed I had a mother

That I never ever let down

I dreamed I was a leader

But I was just a clown

I dreamed I was a young man

And none of his plans fell through 

But one thing I never dreamed

Was that I’d fall in love with you

So if you could love me for who I am

I’ll fall in love with you..,

(C) Frank Howson 2020

3am

Love requires patience 

Life takes time

But how long must I wait

Until the Gods make you mine?

Nothing makes sense

Until you don’t need it to anymore 

We miss our golden chances

We take the wrong door 

Wish I lived inside your heart

To know your joy and pain

To learn what makes you happy

And what brings you disdain 

I’ll love you till the end of time

And in that other life too

No matter what the ups and down

I’ll be true to you 

You were the people’s princess

And on every stage you starred 

I never deserted my mission

Although the nights were long and hard

So many have stood in our way

And ran our ship aground 

They put our hearts in chains

And sold our flesh by the pound

But you can’t put a price on magic

No assassin can freeze its breath

For love knows no seasons

And can not be stilled by death 

(C) Frank Howson. 2020

HOW THE BIRD SINGS

I remember a place
Not far from here
In a small town
I held someone dear
In a strange time
My favourite year
Now I can’t think of it
Without shedding a tear
Some people change
Some people rust
Some people betray you
And piss on your trust
I’m running out of time
To do the things I must
I once drank a toast
To Hollywood or bust
I see children holding children
On this broken highway
I see men hurtin’ people
If they don’t get their way
I see women too scared
To go out after day
I was beaten to a pulp
When I tried to have my say
So sit down beside me
And remind me of things
Tell me all your hopes
That you pray tomorrow brings
How you dream of blue skies
And golden rings
Here I’ll wait out the storm
To hear how the bird sings…
May it tell me the news
That you’re happy and well
And that you rose
While your demons fell
And that you kept your pride
When you were told to sell
May that bird bring me the news
Be I in heaven or hell…

 

(C) Frank Howson 2020

A BRAND NEW YOU

I was too wise to see

What everybody else knew

To spite you I outsmarted me

I fell in love with a brand new you

She talks like you

Walks like you

Does everything except

Think like you

Everything you’ve been hearing

Is true

I fell in love with a brand new you

Now what do I do?

Let’s wait and see

Will the same ending be true?

Leave it up to me…

 

(C) Frank Howson 2020

THE DAY GEORGE ROMERO MET BOOM BOOM GECKO

It was a normal day

Like any other

Knee deep in chaos

And calls from his mother

George Romero had just flown back

A big game hunter who’d gone off-track

With a reputation of some renown

He caught a taxi into town

He’d come a long way on a wing and a song

The driver took a right but something was wrong

But George was dreaming with

His eyes wide open

Without the knowledge

Of what he needed then

George Romero’s destination

A pressing office obligation

Now just a shadow of his former self

Employees worried for his health

But neither George or friends

Knew what laid in store

Within the waiting room

Just behind the door

 

The day George Romero met Boom Boom Gecko

Is still talked about in hushed tones

The gossip mongers picked the bones

Of every sincere act

The first thing that dies is fact

Hounded when push comes to shove

Hypocrites wiped their feet on their love

 

Now Boom Boom Gecko

Was a Sydney beauty

A former door girl from

The Club Tutti Fruitti

George fell headfirst for Boom Boom’s charms

Some say he landed safe in her arms

Others snigger about the lonely wife

Who George fled from to save his life

Now he has found what he’d been looking for

With a girl like Boom Boom who could want for more

 

There’s a poet spewin’ up words

He can’t pronounce

And a sweet young chicken

Hawkin’ her ass for an ounce

A religious prisoner

Gets a knife in the back

And free falls as slowly

As Jack Kerouac

 

The day George Romero met Boom Boom Gecko

Is still talked about in hushed tones

The gossip mongers picked the bones

Of every sincere act

The first thing that dies is fact

Hounded when push comes to shove

Hypocrites wiped their feet on their love

 

 

(C) Frank Howson 2020

 

TOGETHER AGAIN

I used to be Kit Carson

But I lost my way

So I changed my name

To Danny Kaye

And uprooted myself

To Hollywood

Where the people

Were socially minded and good

I bought a nice house

With a swimming pool

And sent my kids

To the finest school

I drank and had fist fights

With Errol Flynn

Until that limey bastard

Did me in

They say the universe

Is a living thing

So I guess you could call it God

Or some thing

I remember the second time

I saw your face

You were workin’ the street

To get your own place

I bought you a coffee

Just to pick your mind

In the next morning’s papers

They said I was kind

I don’t understand

Where I’ve been goin’ wrong

I guess I took my good luck

And sold it for a song

I sold you too

Which wasn’t nice

If I’d waited 6 months

I’d have gotten twice the price

You didn’t understand me

Now or then

But that doesn’t mean

We can’t be together again…

 

Frank Howson (c) 2020

HEAVENLY.

I have only a limited amount of time left to inhabit this body. But I will go on. Like we all do. As a speck of dust floating in the universe. Free, untroubled, and no more time constraints. Oh, and the music, the symphony of silence, which will move even a speck to feel whole like never before.

Having been educated for a lifetime on earth, we are acclimatised to being alone. But it won’t bother us anymore because we’ll now know that it’s at our core to be this way. On earth we lived outwardly for the enjoyment of others, whilst living our real spiritual life within our heads.

It was good preparation for this new life. Our real life. Devoid of any more death or disappointments in this void amidst the great vastness of all voids. Drifting. Weightless. Nowhere to go for there is no “where.” There is only here. And now. No time to be on time somewhere. No further commitments or responsibilities. Nothing to feel guilty about for there are no religions in this new place of real love and peace. All that belonged back in that ant-like existence when we had so little consciousness we could never comprehend the complexities, and yet simplicity, of this great vastness and freedom of being. In this new existence you can let your mind wander for a thousand years, even a million, in old time, and then snap back to a moment before that thought even occurred.

You now realise that the great artists – the writers, the painters and the composers – instinctively understood it.

Finally, we are fulfilled with a capacity to love that was once capped on earth by a ceiling we feared pushing beyond. But now, we experience it to the full which unleashes a bliss to make each of us feel like God. Because in this moment that never ends, we are God.

I was young just yesterday, and now I am older than the world will ever be.

Looking back at my earth life, I now realise that most of us were only living because we feared dying.

But there’s nothing to it.

 

(c) Frank Howson 2020

THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.

The word success is almost impossible to define, as it means something different to just about everyone. It’s much too large than a single word can contain,  because it’s a concept. A floating concept that bends and morphs and matures as we do. What we think it means at the beginning of our journey, may be vastly different to what it means at the end. It’s a dream that, once it’s seemingly fulfilled, may be considered a burden. A curse. A prison cell. A nightmare.

Perhaps it’s God’s sneakiest joke on us all. Giving us what we think we want, in order to find out first hand how hollow it ultimately becomes. 

McCartney hit it on the head, simplifying it to “Can’t Buy Me Love.” A record we could dance to, even if the concept was way beyond our comprehension at the time. Perhaps Paul was starting to understand how restrictive a “successful” life can be.

One of the Ten Commandments states that “Thou Shalt Not Worship False Gods.”  I have interpreted that to include money = success. For I’ve seen first hand people worship it at the expense of their family, friends, colleagues, ethics, talent and own life.  Their “concept” of success was so delusional it eventually devalued every thing of true value in their life.

I was once privileged to have had a song of mine selected for inclusion on the Ferrets’ second album “Fame At Any Price.” I loved that album title then, as I love it now. It was prophetically apt for a band that self-combusted shortly after its release. Perhaps from the pressure of having to follow-up a Number One single and a Gold debut album “Dreams of a Love,” which incidentally also featured a song of mine entitled “Killing Ourselves.”  A lyric about the friends of mine who were falling in action during the Melbourne heroin epidemic of the Seventies. That song proved prophetic for the band too.

It’s one thing to crave success. It’s another to have the stomach for it. People take drugs like heroin to numb themselves to the world around them. Isn’t it bizarre that when many performers finally break through and achieve the success they’ve craved, they reach out to self-medicate themselves to…what? The pain of it? The disappointment that the concept of success was so much more thrilling than the reality? Or is it their fear that they, mere mortals, are suddenly treated like gods, and know they can’t sustain this facade for long without publicly falling? False prophets for a false society. 

It says a lot about our society that Elvis Presley, the most famous and desired man in the world, died of loneliness. Photographs of him towards the end show a man who is dull-eyed, self-medicated to the point of not knowing where he is, and clearly not having a good time. He even mocks himself in his final heartbreaking performances as if all his dignity is gone. Pity the man who inherits the world, but loses his soul?

We are fed the “Dream” to keep us productive, and striving day to night to achieve our goal, so we can be happy. But, what if, as Judy found out, there’s nothing at the end of the rainbow except burnt-out, broken, despairing suckers?

I always thought the rainbow ended on the corners of Hollywood Boulevard and Western. It almost did for me one night, but that’s another story. And there are millions of stories in the naked city.

My father worked his guts out from 6am until 5pm every day in a thankless job that paid him nowhere near his worth. Then he’d come home and drink. Do you blame him? I sure as hell didn’t. He dreamed of reaching retirement age and getting a big payout. He didn’t make it. In one of the final lines in Arthur Miller’s cathartic play Death of a Salesman, “…No one dast blame this man…He just had the wrong dreams. All wrong.”

How much of our lives are wasted chasing the wrong dreams? “When I get a nice new car I’ll be happy!”…”When I get married I’ll be happy!”…”When I get a nice house I’ll be happy!”…”When I have a child I’ll be happy!”…”When I get divorced I’ll be happy!”… “When I can retire and live as I want I’ll be happy!” etc., etc. The truth is, we’re not happy to begin with. One thing I’ve learnt from my own experience is that money and success won’t make you happy. In fact, they will just amplify the painful reality that you aren’t.  In order to enjoy money and success, you must be happy within yourself before you obtain them. Otherwise they are weights around your neck that’ll drag you down to the bottom of the ocean.

Bob Dylan once said that “a successful man is someone who gets up in the morning and goes to bed each night and in between does exactly what he wants.” So, there you have it. Real success is freedom. The freedom to be who you are, and do what you want to do.

I’ve always admired people who are good at what they do. That’s probably a working class respect I inherited from my parents who much admired skilled tradespeople.

America used to have a healthy competitive pride whereby whatever job you had, people wanted to be the best at it. Whether it was driving a cab, being a shoeshine boy, a bellboy, a clerk, a hot dog vendor, etc.

I’ve seen waiters in Los Angeles, old guys who had made a career of it, and they were perfection personified. It was riveting to observe their attention to detail, manners, diplomacy, professionalism, and so on. The top guys made a fortune in tips and deserved every dime. But more than the money, they prided themselves on being the best. Some, were legends. I was in awe of them and paid them great respect. 

So, what is success? Is it determined by money? Or by your ability? Or what others think of you? Or how loved you are by your family? Or how many people know your name? Or how many of your peers respect you? Or how fulfilled you are within yourself?

Because, if we don’t know the answer to that, it means most of us have been striving for something that is so elusive, it is even beyond us. And, if we don’t know what we’re seeking,  how can we expect to find it? Or ever be content?

I like to walk a lot and, when I do, observe people. You could say it’s part of my job. And in my journeys into the outside world, I have from time to time passed many happy people. The happy family man. The happy young girl walking hand-in-hand with her love. The happy little boy who puts his protective arm around his younger sister and smiles at her. The happy busker who has a captive audience and a hat full of money. The happy taxi driver who loves to chat with his passengers and treat each as a new friend. And so on. To me, all these types are successful people. In the truest sense of the word. They are happy within themselves and thus radiate happiness outward. They have not been shackled by expectations. Either of our own making, or of others. 

I have also seen and met some of the wealthiest, most powerful and famous people in the world whilst I lived in L.A, and quite a few were utterly miserable, and made everyone in their presence feel the same.

In the some of the final lines of the classic movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” it is stated, “No man is a failure who has friends.”

I believe that. I have some very true, loyal friends. Their rock solid friendship make me feel successful, happy and content for having found them. No matter what I do professionally, or don’t do, or they do or don’t,  we have achieved something rare, precious and beautiful. Something real. 

 

(c) Frank Howson 2020

photograph by Vanessa Allan.